(NAFB) – Midwest lawmakers urge the federal government to prioritize funding for flood mitigation and prevention projects along the lower Missouri River.

Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Missouri Republican Representative Sam Graves led nearly a dozen colleagues in a letter to Michael Connor, Assistant Secretary for Civil Works, on the issue. Specifically, the lawmakers are pushing Connor to utilize funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to invest in flood-related projects for the Lower Missouri River Basin, including the Navigation and Flood Control Studies and the Bank Stabilization and Navigation Project.

As the letter states, the legislation also provides funding to complete site-specific studies to address immediate needs along the river.

Grassley says, “When I voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, I was voting for exactly this type of federal support for critical infrastructure.”

The letter comes as the Department of the Army begins to allocate funding from the infrastructure package for the Army Civil Works Program in Fiscal Year 2022.